French term (edited): Etat néant

This would be better than "void" as an English rendering. "Void" and "nothingness" are used in translations of Sartre's philosophy as opposites to "Being" or "existence", but in this context I suggest the above.

French term (edited): Etat néant

I feel that the derogatory tone of the ST very much needs to be retained here:

Null means having no value; [ ...] Null also means invalid, or having no binding force. From the Latin nullus, meaning "not any," poor, powerless null is not actually there at all. Or if it was, it's gone now.
...lacking any legal or binding force
...a quantity of no importance

From vocabulary.com

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Note added at 1 hr (2021-01-07 10:54:22 GMT)
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OR: a Non-Entity State

French term (edited): Etat néant

A wordplay on "stateless person"

This translation was coined by someone who seems to know the story inside-out, so I would tend to trust it.

in writings on Chad and its efforts to become a vibrant and prosperous nation. Sam C. Nolutshungu, for example, writes in his Limits of Anarchy: Intervention and State Formations in Chad,

"Desperately poor and locked in perpetual strife, Chad-which has lived suspended between creation and destruction for most of its three or so decades-was not of much consequence in the strategic competition of the great powers. At the highest estimate one more theater of Libyan mischief making in the Sahel, Chad was aberrant, marginal, a fictive state at a time when other states, whatever their weaknesses, generally seemed permanent, even in an Africa marked by an economic and political failure. Chad’s domestic political evolution seemed a model of failure with little to teach the outside world."

I begin this chapter by acknowledging and refuting the above statement. On one hand, it is true that, fifty years after Chad gained independence from France, Chad’s independence is only nominal, and therefore a matter of debate--France still plays a strong role in Chad’s affairs. It is also true that the country has seen great conflict. The late 1970s and early 1980s saw Chad in a series of devastating wars that placed Chadian as primary combatants, while, in fact, they were serving as proxies for European super powers, who sought their own interests, along with the selling of their weapons and war machineries. Also during that time, Moammar Gadhafi, the Libyan president, annexed the Aouzou strip, which is located in the extreme north of the country. Chad in these years was “un état néant” (a stateless state). Put otherwise, Chad’s “nation-ness” was threatened by wars, and its map was almost redesigned. Libyan annexation lasted until February 1994, until the International Court of Justice in The Hague restituted the Aouzou strip to Chad.
https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3...



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Note added at 1 hr (2021-01-07 10:45:52 GMT)
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It also makes sense a "stateless person" has no solid anchoring point, is just drifting - like Tchad in these years ...

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Note added at 1 hr (2021-01-07 10:55:22 GMT)
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Le Tchad est un « Etat néant » avait dit à l’époque un Président français en exercice, Valérie Giscard d’Estaing. Un autre Président français en exercice, en l’occurrence Jacques Chirac, avait dit que le Tchad n’est pas un Etat, mais « un territoire délimité par les frontières des pays voisins ». Plus récemment, l’actuel Président français en exercice, Nicolas Sarkozy, avait testé les affirmations de ses prédécesseurs en affirmant publiquement être capable d’aller au Tchad « chercher ceux [des auteurs de crime français] qui restent quoi qu’ils aient fait, je dis bien quoi qu’ils aient fait ». Sarkozy a même osé dire en face de son homologue Déby que ce n’est pas parce que celui-ci est légitime qu’il peut « se permettre de faire n’importe quoi ». A quel autre Chef d’Etat digne de cette appellation, un autre chef d’Etat (une puissance militaire mondiale soit-il) peut-il tenir un tel langage en public ?

http://east-side-chad.over-blog.com/article-21498959.html

French term (edited): Etat néant

See...:

https://www.crisisgroup.org/africa/central-africa/central-af...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-mystery-of-phantom-st...

French term (edited): Etat néant

https://www.justice.gov/eoir/page/file/1145786/download
https://www.britannica.com/topic/failed-state

French term (edited): Etat néant

www.telegraph.co.uk › ... › Climate & People
15 Nov 2018 — Chad has been dysfunctional for decades, even before Idriss Deby, the ... Mr Deby has also convinced European states that he provides the ...

www.news24.com › news24 › 7-africa-states-dysfunction...
24 Jun 2008 — Seven of the world's 10 most dysfunctional countries are in ... The top 10, in order, were Somalia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Chad, Iraq, Congo, ...

military forces and police in dysfunctional states of sub ... - JStor
www.jstor.org › stable
Key words: dysfunctional states, Sub-Saharan Africa, military forces, police ... Chadian mercenaries and units of rebels recruited mainly from the northern part of ...
by R KŁOSOWICZ · ‎2017 · ‎Related articles

Warlords and Militarism in Chad - JStor
www.jstor.org › stable
trajectory of the Chadian state (and its successive regimes). In the case of ... building, is perceived by Africanists as automatically and inherently dysfunctional.
by R Charlton · ‎1989 · ‎Cited by 51 · ‎Related articles

State - lest it be confused with a 'nihilistic condition' - ought really to be prefaced with nation or be described as government.